The lock clicks in the dead of night as I hear the doorknob twist slowly. Suddenly I hear his footsteps as he tries to silently close the door. My husband’s intentional quietness folds in with the hour he’s chosen to keep. I’ve been up for at least two hours; waiting, padding back and forth, looking at our children sleeping, desperately staring out the window in hopes of seeing the flash of headlights making their way down the road and into my driveway. My heart beats rapidly knowing he’s home. It’s either ready for a fight or it’s thrilled he’s finally come home. I lie still trying to figure out which one it is tonight.
He doesn’t come home upstairs to me, but heads to the kitchen. I can hear him open the refrigerator in the scramble for his welcome meal. The crinkle of cellophane breaks the space of silence and then the microwave door opens and beeps with the time. Silverware clinks on the plate as he eats the dinner I prepared earlier. I remember the fragile moments of this evening as I prepared that dinner with hope in mind. I quickly begin role playing in my weary and distraught head as to how the night actually occurred. Softly I remember my children asking their questions in our quiet and safe home of pretend security.
“When is Daddy coming home? Will he be here for dinner?”
“Will Daddy be here before I go to bed? He promised we’d have fight night tonight!”
I quickly answer with a nervous voice. “Daddy had a meeting. He’d rather be with us but he needs to make money. Let’s eat, the food is getting cold.”
Another half hour goes by. “Daddy’s meeting had to run over. He’s dealing with some very difficult customers right now. I’m sure he’ll have fight night tomorrow.”
The children listen to my words while they stare at me with knowing eyes. We all smile delicately, and shake our heads together in false agreement.
I finish off our dishes as I fire off the answers to my children’s questions. I carefully tear off the plastic wrap and put it over his plate, making the plastic tight, suffocating.
I give the children their baths, read them a story and give kisses and hugs. They struggle going to sleep, always wanting glasses of water, an extra story. It makes my nerves brittle, this hour of bedtime. After they’re asleep and my chores are done, I’m afraid. I’m alone, I’m afraid, and I sit and listen to the silence of my house. There’s no footsteps, there’s no heart. There’s only the slight hum of the furnace and the occasional car passing by, never pulling in but passing by. The silence is deafening as I walk from room to room, thinking up things to do. Finally I give in and escape to my bedroom, to the ritual of falling asleep for a few draining hours only to wake up to the inevitable. An empty bed. An empty house. An empty marriage.
In the early dawn light I see the shadow of what was once my husband. I watch his lips pull in and out with the stale booze and cigarette breath. It encompasses the room and I want to fling open the windows despite the 30-degree weather to banish the staleness of his body. I quietly get dressed to walk. To walk away from my house. To use a small space and time to call my own. To cleanse myself from my drunken husband inside and the innocent children lying in their beds. To fill my lungs with something clean and full of life, not the staleness of life itself. To somehow try to figure out through the silence of woods the answers to save him, to save myself, to save my children from us all.
I carefully meander down my road, veering left to take the trails through the woods I’ve carved out on mornings such as this. The snow is beaten down, shiny with ice in patches from the rising sun. I shove my gloved hands deep in my pockets and my thoughts shove deeper inside my brain. I imagine my husband that night, at the bar, with his friends, and in my imagination with his girlfriend. The girlfriend who moved away and left town. The girlfriend who meant nothing other than a good sexual partner. The girlfriend who laid in her bed with my husband and then sent him home to his wife and children. Did she know that after he came home he would wrap me in his arms and whisper, “That’s my girl, that’s my baby?” Did she know he would hold me without conscience in his arms and tell me how much adores me, how his world is lost without me, how there’s nobody like me?
Tears stream down my face and freeze from the cold air. My nose runs and I keep taking a gloved hand to wipe the mess. It’s disgusting and I would yell at my children for the same act. My mind whirls with a range of thoughts, with pictures of other women and it churns for something substantial to hang onto. It whirls with anger and self-hatred. It whirls with hysteria and the words COWARD, COWARD, COWARD, ENABLER, ENABLER, ENABLER! I crush my hands over my ears to stop the accusations. I crush my hands over my eyes to stop my mind. I crush my hands over my ears over my eyes over my soul to stop the pictures. I fall down into the snow and stare up at the sky and remember the girl I was, now the woman I am. Fallen, beaten, devoured, and lost. My anger is directed at me: not him, not her, not friends, not the bar. I am the one losing this battle for “self”. It is me that lacks courage.
I struggle for a place to be alone, other than the loneliness of my house. I long for the choice to be alone, away from responsibilities, away from the feeling something always has to be done. I struggle for courage to do what I must to feel proud, worthy, fulfilled. Then I can stop the distance and detachment from my children and welcome them with open arms. Not a forced smile and empty eyes.
I take it. I take my aloneness with nothing but an empty notebook on a Monday morning after his binge at the bar. I take sheets of paper, a blue ink pen, a paperback, and my purse. I check into Room 142 and I sit on the polyester bedspread. It is slick and the blue and green and beige swirls make me dizzy. I look at the anonymous furniture in the room. I look at the soiled carpet and tacky chairs covered in salmon covered vinyl. I try to imagine all the people in the room before me and try to picture their faces and bodies. I try to picture why they came here, who made love on this bed, who worked at this desk, who called home from this telephone. I listen. There is silence again, no heart, no footsteps, but it is okay. This silence does not belong to me but is meant to be here. I bought this silence to claim myself, to calm myself, to find myself. At least until 2:30 p.m., then it’s time for my kids to come home and my true role to begin.
I suddenly leave the bed and stand in front of the harsh fluorescent light over the sink. It casts shadows and lines that I never knew were there. The light is ugly against my face. I’ve never looked older and even my jowls seem to sag. The light gives my eyes dark, haunted circles that I never knew were there. I stare into my eyes and become frightened. I can’t grasp if the person staring back is me, or still a little girl. We both look so different. I do see the little girl though, she’s just so distant. At times I see her running and jumping with friends during the dusk of summer nights. She keeps flashing in and out of my picture, and once she dashes in she flees, terrified of being seen. She’s there though. She’s just unsure.
Too many dreams have escaped or been replaced by other’s dreams. Roles have reversed for her and myself. Ambition has been replaced with survival, and love has been replaced by betrayal. A life has been lost by lies, and the dreams that were spun were smooth and fluid, fine with the sacrifices that to be made, and in the middle there was happiness. Unfortunately, with my new twist of knowledge, all things changed. The sacrifices became a sacrilege when a husband can so carelessly, disrespectfully play around. A stranger came into my house who can never again be a friend, confidante, lover. He will always be a stranger.
My days fold in on themselves and my depression worsens. My depression falls against my own weak acts of not moving forward in this desperate life I live. I check back into Room 142 after two weeks of loneliness.
I go to the lingerie store to buy beautiful seductive silky things before I check into my hotel. I quickly put them on and analyze myself in the same mirror. I stare at this woman and what must be wrong. I stare at the curve of her body and find nothing distasteful. I hesitantly walk closer to the mirror and apply makeup. I step back and find nothing wrong with her face. I stare at her soul in the mirror and find destruction and then it finally hits. It’s not her fault. I think about wearing the lingerie tonight, the makeup tonight, but that is distasteful. It is not worthy for the sacrifice it entails. It’s not worth the glint in my husband’s eyes, the silent okay that he is forgiven. This is for me and my $35.99. I begin to think the money is a ridiculous luxury for such a few hours. Then the silence comes and I claim it because it is not mine. It is bought and does not belong to me.
Quickly my days once again fold in on themselves, but they are different days. They are spent with smile and love for my children. They don’t care about time or silence. I can buy silence that is welcoming, forgiving, and full of retribution. The silence in my house only spurs my resolve and I can sit quietly, planning, forgoing what he is doing, where he is, where he’s been, and who he is with. I laugh through my days and nights and finally give in. This is not my fault. The fault of this marriage lies within my husband and my sympathy expounds on his soul and what must be left of it and his conscience. He is without and I worry about his life without Room 142 and the dignity he will have to learn to claim.
